Challenges to Digital Financial Services in Latin America - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

After the 2008 financial crisis, the number and diversity of providers of digital financial services (DFS) surged in Latin America (LatAm). This trend included the establishment of successful pioneers...

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Got away with it? No, Folarin Balogun row seriously weakens Gianni Infantino

Greed is good culture is one thing, but this scandal crosses a line because it impacts what happens in the 90 minutes on the pitch

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Careers

This position is based on campus. Per UMN policy, work may be done remotely when appropriate and approved by your manager.  All UMN employees are expected to follow applicable public health and safety procedures.

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A new perspective on the growth of Spanish banks in Latin America, 1994–2024 | Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History | Cambridge Core

A new perspective on the growth of Spanish banks in Latin America, 1994–2024

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Financial Innovation is not Linear. Cash, Code, and Culture will Coexist

Orsi Husz’s Bankminded offers a timely reminder that what many now take for granted—the routine, almost invisible presence of banks in everyday life—is neither natural nor inevitable. It is the product of a specific historical process. Drawing on post-war Sweden, Husz shows how banks became “intimate agents” in the organisation of daily life: receiving wages, extending credit, shaping consumption, and even mediating identity through documentation.

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The Luxury World Cup? FIFA, Digital Payments and the New Economics of Presence

The controversy surrounding ticket prices for the 2026 FIFA World Cup may ultimately prove to be about far more than football (see Forbes here). At first sight, the debate appears straightforward: fans are angry because tickets, hotels and hospitality packages have become extraordinarily expensive. Yet underneath the headlines sits a deeper transformation in the political economy of sport, tourism and payments.

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Tap, Click, Transfer: Is “Pay by Bank” the Quiet Open Finance Revolution at Last?

A Quiet Surge in Adoption How to pay securely online has been an ongoing concern since the advent of the commercial Internet in the late 1990s. Indeed, one of PayPal's claims to fame (and success) was to allow users a single point where to keep the now familiar ritual: type in your card number, expiry date and CVV, hope the transaction goes through, and perhaps complete a two-factor authentication step.

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Finabien and first step toward financial inclusion for the unbanked

Remittances are more than a payment flow — they are a lifeline. In my latest contribution to the CashEssentials blog, I explore what Mexico’s public remittance infrastructure can teach us about financial inclusion, payment choice, and the enduring role of cash. Drawing on fieldwork and institutional analysis, the piece examines FINABIEN, Mexico’s public remittance and payments network, and what it reveals about how migrant transfers actually reach households.

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Credit Card Rewards

It’s always nice to see your work recognised—thank you to Juliana Kaplan from Business Insider for including my perspective in her latest piece on credit card rewards and consumer behaviour. A timely topic, and one that continues to evolve. Of course, you can also read my take on rewards here

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Scan, Pay, Boom! How QR Payments Took Over—And Where They’re Failing

QR code payments have become a defining symbol of the cashless economy. Easy to recognise and simple to use, these matrix barcodes allow users to pay instantly by scanning with a smartphone. By 2025, more than 40 countries have launched QR payment systems, either through central banks, private platforms, or a mix of both. However, despite this broad geographical reach, very few countries have seen these systems flourish at scale.

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Why Fintech Needs Poets

At first glance, it might seem surprising to hear Robert Goldstein, COO of BlackRock, praising the value of English and history graduates. But for those paying attention to the direction of fintech and payments, it feels less like a revelation and more like a long-overdue acknowledgement. Goldstein’s recent remarks—voicing “more and more conviction” in hiring people from the humanities—cut across the well-worn narrative that only STEM subjects matter, especially in industries shaped by algorithms, data, and digital infrastructure.

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Taxing Love, Labour and Loyalty: How Remittances Challenge Trump’s Neo-Mercantilism

As in 2016, the Trump administration once again floated the idea of taxing remittances sent from the United States to foreign countries, proposing a 5% levy on outbound transfers. While politically framed as a measure to "protect American interests," this idea resurrects a mercantilist logic that sits uneasily with the realities of modern cross-border payment systems and the lives of migrant workers.

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The Price of Going Cashless: Privacy and Resilience at Risk

This week’s revelations from Publimetro are a sobering reminder of the fragile underpinnings of a fully digital financial ecosystem. The report alleges that databases held by banks, Mexico’s tax authority (SAT), and even the national electoral institute (INE) were being offered for sale on a hacker forum—for as little as $5,000. It’s a striking example of the systemic vulnerabilities that arise when cash disappears and data becomes currency.

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Beyond Convenience: Why the Cash Debate Is About Resilience, Not Just Rights

The idea that shops in the UK could be required to accept cash has sparked a diverse response across the political and media spectrum (see table below)—but one thing is clear: this isn’t just about protecting vulnerable people, though that in itself is reason enough. It’s about ensuring that everyone retains the right to choose how they pay—whether with coins, cards, or a mobile tap.

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Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024) - New Books Network

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Palm Reading for Payments: China’s Biometric Leap and the Legal Maze Ahead

In May 2023, WeChat made headlines by introducing one of the first significant rollouts of palm-vein payment technology. Debuting in Beijing’s Daxing Airport Express line and several university dining halls in Shenzhen and Shanghai, WeChat Palm Pay allows users to pay simply by hovering their hand over a scanner. By the end of 2023, Tencent reported over ten thousand palm-scanning terminals had been installed across restaurants, vending machines, metro stations, and retail outlets in select Chinese cities.

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When Digital Fails: Why Cash Still Matters in a Resilient Payments Ecosystem

As regulators, fintechs, and central banks inch or giant-leap towards the ideal of a "cashless society", the conversation has rightly focused on consumer choice while conveniently side-stepped issues of cost transparency. But beyond these valid points lies a more fundamental issue: resilience. The digital payments infrastructure that underpins modern commerce is efficient—until it isn’t. It has been designed to support far higher volumes than cash ever could.

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Slow and Steady Wins the Race: ATMs, Tuvalu, and the Digital Dream

Chapter 2 of Cash and Dash (Bátiz-Lazo, 2018) offers a timely reminder that major financial innovations often took years — even decades — to establish themselves. Far from being instant game-changers, technologies like the ATM spread unevenly, tangled in local infrastructure challenges, regulatory caution, and a general sense of “wait and see.” First Adoption of Cash Machines in Selected Countries (1967-1980)

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Swipe, Reward, Repeat: Could Loyalty Programs Falter in a Tariff Downturn?

As we brace for a potential recession, the future of credit card rewards and points programs hangs in the balance. How will these perks evolve in an economic downturn? That was the super interesting question that I recently discussed with Juliana Kaplan from Business Insider. From an international payments systems perspective, credit card rewards programmes have long been a strategic tool for issuers to drive customer acquisition and retention.

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From Spaghetti to the Finternet: A Decade of Thinking About Payment Hub Futures

Over a decade ago, in 2014, Fabian Markert published a paper, while modest in its scope, it offered a clear-headed analysis of the tangle that plagued banks’ internal payment architectures. Writing at the height of SEPA implementation, Markert described a world in which banks had grown up with scattered, legacy-based systems—so-called “spaghetti” architectures—that were expensive to maintain and increasingly ill-suited to a competitive European payment environment.

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Top Fintech Blogs

Not sure how these are selected but probably would make the cut if I was more regular. Anyway, glad Chris Skinner is there but sad that Dave Birch is not ranked higher. See the full list here. To illustrate this post, we introduce “Prof. Cashtron: The Chronicler of the Financial Future” — an action figure inspired by groundbreaking work in financial technology and the history of cash machines... With a wee hint of Ultraman by Chatgpt.

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Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse" (Polity Press, 2024) - New Books Network

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Chris Skinner, "Intelligent Money: When Money Thinks for You" (Marshall Cavendish, 2024) - New Books Network

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<em>The Economic History Review</em> | EHS Journal | Wiley Online Library

How do famines shape the health of survivors? We examine the long-term impact of the Great Irish Famine (1845–52) on human stature, distinguishing between adverse scarring effects and the apparent re....

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